Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on how societal progress can lead to complacency in pursuing further change.
Spike Lee's quote highlights the human tendency to become less urgent about pushing for change once certain advancements have been achieved. He urges us to recognize that while we have made significant progress in areas such as voting rights and public amenities, it is essential to maintain a sense of urgency to address ongoing injustices and strive for further improvements in society.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, this quote can remind the audience of the need to keep pushing for equality.
I think that anyone who lives in New York, who's lived here, who's spent any time here, knows that it's basically a love-hate relationship, you might say. Even though I still think it's the greatest city in the world and I wouldn't live anywhere else, there're still things about it one doesn't like. The love far outweighs the negative.
There's an unwritten law that you cannot have a Jewish character in a film who isn't 100 percent perfect, or you're labeled anti-Semitic.
The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.
It gets dangerous when you start allowing people to validate your work.
All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.
Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.
Today you have to run faster to stay in place.
Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
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